Do you really think there will be a cure for PD soon?
Why or why not?

Professor Mat During carried out clinical trials in a gene therapy treatment on Nathan Klien and eleven others with advanced Parkinson's. Klien made headlines across the U.S. and around the world. And the trials were deemed a success. Fast forward to 2008 and the company involved in those early trials Neurologix www.neurologix.net are underway with a second gene therapy trial with full FDA approval

Ceregene are also starting phase two trials with their innovative cere-120 program and their gene therapy delivery of neurturin appears very exciting.

Will there be a cure.......YES......
How long.............................................. ...........

in my opinion ProSavin is the most exciting trial around at the moment. Words like "cure" are mentioned with results evident weeks after application so there is hope that we might see some preliminary reports by the summer.

Don't forget Cogane, another with high hopes.

"Cure" is such a big word, I am hopeful that science will keep me with a reasonable quality of life for a reasonable duration, if this happens then I would term that as a "cure".

Neil.

This topic has been discussed a lot, but I always find it interesting.
Firist - what is a cure?
Is it finding something that controls symptoms of PD?
I'd buy that!
Or do you mean something that grows back what we have lost (cell-wise, etc)?
I'd buy that, too!

The first is more likely, of course. ProSavin sounds like it takes care of both. and nothing against Europe, but it's being tested in France. The US doesn't always approve great finds like this.

Now, to answer your question about finding a cure soon:
that, too much be qualified.

We're hot on the trail of a cure - I read where there are 75 drugs/treatments in the pipeline. But in the US we are electing a new President - it will depend on how "research minded" he/she is. Yes - I think we will find a cure - as far as soon - it all depends on the $$ and whether or not the pharmaceutical business thinks it's worth researching more. (Pharma has a lot of money to lose if we find a cure - think of all those pills we take!)

I think the research on a blood test to diagnose PD will be a big help. I can imagine there are many misdiagnosed.

Peggy

a cure is life without ever having PD again
---------
a cure means - they want to live again...
a cure means - they have hope in their hearts
a cure means to be free of illness and feel young again
I was young and my glory daze passed - and I have learned abit
I received patience, and I have grown a richer life through the people I have met and loved, and I have seen those that I would have thought would be there for me, walk away and all of these adversities have made me a better person... I have grown in ways - that I never would have if I had not
been ill and it was not all fun - yet - I can not change one thing in my life
that would have happened anyway - you dont want this to be your destiny,
neither did I - yet if you let go of the rush to finish - you will see amazing things...
___________



yes we may have cures,
this may sound a bit harsh - yet this is true -
life is not counted by the amount of days in our lives - yet by the amount of life in our days...

__________

never ever give up hope
and remember we are only human -
no one gets to live forever in this mud suit..

____________

Heard this before....we can only hold on to the hope that it is true.
Perhaps we have some light at the end of the PD tunnel?

Thank you Tena always for your wonderful treaties .. I think it is a fact that you may be "healthy" but live a miserable life and you may be happy even with PD. It is all in the mind and attidude ... we need to make the best of a life which is only a brief dream

there is nothing sinister about ProSavin being trialled in France, Oxford Biomedica (inventors of Prosavin and an offshoot of Oxford University), are very close to a big French pharma group called Sanofi-aventis, hence there are all sorts of commercial advantages to hosting the trials in France.

Considering the global reputation of Oxford University (ranked anywhere from 2nd to 10th in the world university league tables), and the track record of the French with PD research, (remember they pioneered DBS), if I lived in the US I would want to know why the FDA was introducing more delay for potential treatments purely because they hadn't been trialled in the US. Perhaps they are afraid of litigation, who knows, if the French tell me Prosavin works then my waiver of liability will be signed in seconds.

Take care,
Neil.

Neil
I am sure you have figured this one out - America is a litigious society. I once said that we would already have a cure for PD had it not been for the fouro-letter word that haunts all trials -"tort." I am not being critical of or negating our legal rights, but in the US we have gone too far.

By all means ProSavin is being developed by sponsors in a very professional manner. Your point is a good one that we (the PD community) should be hounding the FDA for more research for PD. I'm just not so sure the FDA is the right tree we should be barking up. In their defense, they are critically underfunded and understaffed. When you consider that they are in charge of regulating everything on the market from dogfood to the most sophisticated surgical equipment, it's no wonder it takes 15 years to get a drug approved.

You can give us a good assessment; from your perspective what is needed the most? Change the way drugs are approved or change the FDA? Which would be easier (faster) to do? I get so frustrated working with an antiquated system of drug approval with the one responsible already overworked three-fold times. It's like giving a life-changing possibility to the busiest organization in the world. No matter how good it is, nothing is going to happen anytime soon.

Time is of the essence. Maybe its time to picket the government? Ii don't know; I just know I am getting impatient and am not cured.

Frustrated
Peg

is plenty going on in research. Wow 75 programs. When I was first dx (96) there were zilch, zappo, zip, goin on. Today's research into our disease has an intensity about it that I would not have predicted five years ago.

No one has mentioned the quiet achiever Michael J Fox and his dedicated researchers who have raised $US100million for PD Research and the fact former Intel boss Andy Grove has invested $40million of his own wealth as well as lend his considerable expertise in business and "get things done" attitude.

Litigate, litigate, litigate, hopfully the U.S. will sort that problem out, and minimize the rubbish that lawyers can sue anybody at the smell of an oily rag.

The U.S. and the planet it seems have outgrown the FDA. The speed of progress is moving into the outer layers of the stratosphere while the FDA civil servants are still coming to grips with Columbus's discovery/arrival on the shores of America all those centuries ago.